Simple ways to determine if you've been a ham radio operator too long.

• You start calling CQ in your sleep.
• You taught your dog to communicate by barking Morse Code (and he can do it at 50 WPM.)
• During field day, you fix lunch by throwing a brisket over a wire antenna for your kilowatt 23-cm transmitter.
• By the time you've made a few contacts...fajitas!
• Your kids have their Extra class tickets by the time they're seven.
• During a landline phone conversation, you attempt to press the side of the phone handset when it's you're turn to talk.
• People mistake your car for a giant porcupine.
• When ending a phone call, you say: "73," give your callsign and say "clear."
• Your QSL card collection is thicker than ten Houston phone books.
• You bought the house next door just so you would have space for all your radios and antennas.
• Your local ham radio store already has a parking space with your callsign printed on it, and they are getting ready to offer you partial ownership.
• The noises from your car air conditioner sounds like 40M CW.
• When buying a house, your primary concern is power line noise and antenna restrictions.
• Your daughters first words are: "CQ CQ CQ".
• You take the grandparents money gift to your three-year-old son, and "invest" it for him in a 75 foot tower.
• You leave the boss's BBQ party early to meet a 2M net schedule, where you check in for the "count only".
• You are certain that heaven will be a continuous Hamfest.
• You firmly believe that the Dayton Hamvention should be declared a 3-day holiday.
• You KNOW hanger 18 contains a top secret two-foot long antenna made from a coat hanger which has 100db gain on all HF bands.
• The postman thinks you are a spy because of all of the cards you get from overseas with funny numbers on them.
• You remember 500 call signs, but forget your XYL's birthday.
• Your friends think you're crazy to invest $1000+ in a radio.
• Your radio equipment is worth more than your new car.
• You do not want your shack to be endommaged by a lightning strike, but the house can go to ashes...
• You hear CW or SSB even when the radio is off.
• You believe you hear stations in the white noise even when the antenna is disconnected.
• You view every house you drive by as a potential QTH.
• You look at car license plates automatically for ham plates.
• You call the new Extra Class licensees "lite".
• You view every mountain peek as your next QTH.
• You still think that a ham with the "N" as his second letter, as a Novice.
• If someone interrupts you, you tell them to "stand by".
• You tell your wife to use full break in when the two of you talk.
• You wonder how all of these 1x3 calls forgot everything they learned.
• You absentmindedly start logging you unanswered CQ's.
• You remember how to draw a colpits circuit.
• You call CQ and announce "tuning".
• If you still resent the idea of someone starting numbers on 10 meters.
• The "new bands" are really new.
• You fondly remember the warm glow from your rig that kept your room warm in the winter time.
• You're glad that there is only one Yemen.
• When you look at your P5 QSL's, you still wonder what the hell Romeo was thinking.
• You are already planning what kind of operating you'll be doing, and the antenna's you'll need at the next sunspot minimum.
• You're better at geography than geography teachers.
• You naturally think of the Earth's surface as unbounded and finite.
• You took calculus and were relieved to see DX'ing would be part of it.
• You wonder which Christmas Island do they mean?
• You've bought and sold 40 radios, and still have not found 'the perfect radio'.
• You needed a parcel about 1/4 mile long for that Rhombic antenna you never installed.
• You replace your coax cables about every 3 years just in case you might suffer a DB loss of receive signal.
• You were forced to cut a deal with kids not to transmit during the 'Rug Rats' program.
• You asked permission of the XYL for another radio purchase even though you have plenty of money.
• You have 2 jobs, just so you can afford that brand new rig.
• You research every technical article you can find, thinking you may not know of something that may affect your stations performance.
• You're eyeballing one of the kids bedrooms for your radio shack over the 'closet' you have now.
• You bought a backup generator about 4 kw larger than needed to support the QTH during a long term power outage.
• You stop at a rest area on the highway and wonder why they don't mark repeater coverage on the maps in the glass cases.